Looking back over his career as a climate activist, edutainer Bill Nye “The Science Guy” has admitted to being a failure at convincing people about the evils of global warming.
“It’s completely ineffective! I am a failure!” Nye exclaimed when reflecting back on a career spent in television trying to persuade people about human-induced climate change.
“Climate is changing, it’s our fault,” he said. “In the modern era, climate change was discovered, in my opinion, like in the 1970s, and we’ve done virtually nothing about it all this time.”
“So, if you like to worry about things, it’s a great time,” he quipped.
In a discussion with folks from Salon Magazine, Nye blamed the fossil fuel industry for fueling skepticism toward global warming, saying that “they have worked so hard to introduce doubt.”
“The guy who always makes me crazy is Frank Luntz,” Nye said, especially for introducing the idea that “doubt is your friend, make sure that everybody knows there’s doubt.”
“Doubt, doubt, doubt, doubt… and look where the world is,” Nye said.
Speaking to the camera, Nye pleaded with the public to stand up against climate skeptics.
“What I tell everybody is vote,” Nye said. “We don’t want everybody to be a scientist; that would be unwieldy. We need accountants and artists, filmmakers, journalists, but we want everybody to appreciate science.”
“We just want people to appreciate the value of science to your everyday life, to the economy of whatever country you live in and to the future of humankind as we face the biggest challenge so far: climate change,” he said.
Earlier this year, The Daily Wire published a list of “9 Reasons You Shouldn’t Listen to Bill Nye About Science,” which included Nye’s beginnings as “the Science Guy” on comedy television. Possessing only an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering, Nye won a contest that involved impersonating Steve Martin, which launched his career in the comedic media.
Nye has been repeatedly taken to task by real scientists for his lack of basic knowledge of climate science, as well as other areas of science — such as the biology underlying the abortion debate.
“I have always been amazed that anyone would pay attention to Bill Nye, a pretend scientist in a bow tie,” said Weather Channel founder John Coleman in 2016.
“As a man who has studied the science of meteorology for over 60 years and received the AMS [American Meteorological Society’s] ‘Meteorologist of the Year’ award, I am totally offended that Nye gets the press and media attention he does,” Coleman added.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter Follow @tdwilliamsrome
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